Reappraising Soft Cell’s This Last Night in Sodom (1984) … An Underrated Middle Finger to Thatcherism

Only 3 short years after Tainted Love set the world on fire, drugs, constant touring and almost total emotional collapse meant Soft Cell disbanded with This Last Night in Sodom in 1984. A dirty, mono slab of commercial suicide, critics disregarded the album as being too radical a departure for the former pop darlings. But I would argue that ...Sodom is, in fact, the natural and appropriately chaotic conclusion to the bands original mission statement.

Of all the early 80’s electronic duos, Soft Cell were not only the first, but also certainly the most misunderstood. Many only know Soft Cell for their 1981 mega-hit Tainted Love, and for Marc Almond’s signature all-black look – somewhere between Edith Piaf and Scott Walker. But at the time the band was also notable for their subject matter highlighting the stories of people on the fringes of society – rent boys, suburban housewives and sex workers. For all the pearl clutching Soft Cell inspired during their original 80’s tenure, the deeper social commentary of their music was often overlooked. Soft Cell were always critical – though in a sub textual way – of early 80’s individualism, a knock on effect from conservative Margaret Thatcher largely ‘rectifying’ the financial crisis of the 1970’s by proliferating big business, a return to ‘traditional values’, and shifting economics away from the production of goods to the provision of services (including heavy privatisation). What the British press deemed as inflammatory shock tactics was in fact an attempt to comment on a nation in a state of transition.

Many would label Soft Cell’s music as ‘sleazy’, yet far fewer will question why this is the case. Almond has discussed the bands wish to undermine the shift towards moral respectability of the times as proliferated by the dual powers of Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse, who succeeded in ushering in a new era of censorship and moral panic (see the video nasties panic). In early Soft Cell songs, this new found turn towards moral decency was undermined in songs such as Sex Dwarf (a tongue in cheek at morally righteous yet slimily exploitative tabloid press), Seedy Films (detailing long nights spent in Soho porno cinemas) and Chips on My Shoulder (satirising armchair activists and ethical hypocrites). From their inception Soft Cell had a political philosophy at the centre of their work, a philosophy which became expended upon as the group became a part of the system they aimed to send up in becoming unlikely pop stars. Their two following albums – 1983’s The Art of Falling Apart and 1984’s This Last Night in Sodom aimed to course correct the band towards the darker sound and feel of their original Leeds Polytechnic experimentation.

The sharp turn from tongue in cheek satirising towards furious rebuttal is of course due, in part, to the bands ever growing drug problem. However, the social landscape in 1984 was very different even to 1981 when Tainted Love was released. By 1984, AIDS – certainly the decades darkest hour, and one that highlighted the human cost of Thatcher’s brand of traditional values-led individualism – was becoming mainstream news as more and more people began to succumb to the disease. The Falklands War had been and gone, free-market fundamentalism had become de rigeur and in March 1984, the same month in which This Last Night in Sodom was released, moves were made to shut down Britain’s mines, which was met with fierce resistance. What had been started in 1979 when Thatcher came into power was fully implemented by 1984, her libertarian/individualist stance meaning the rich became richer whilst the poor became poorer. This trajectory can be mapped exactly against Soft Cell’s tenure. Many 1980’s bands moved from electronic experimentation inspired by punk, early industrial and Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy into the sphere of soulless, bland pop. Whereas Soft Cell started as an experimental art-pop duo, and ended an equally challenging, experimental and stylistically fluxional outfit until the end. Whilst the band may be best remembered for the perfect pop hits taken from their debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, it is perhaps more accurate to see their chart-topping tenure as a detour rather than a defining feature of the duo. It is crucial to note that a similar shift happened in America with the election of Ronald Reagan, who himself was credited as ‘rescuing’ America from the social and moral panic that characterised the nation in the 1970’s (see my post The Nuclear Family in 1970’s Exploitation Cinema for a more detailed analysis of the cultural reaction at this time). Therefore, it is no surprise that Soft Cell’s music – innately British but recorded largely in New York – developed a world-wide awareness that grew from album to album. On …Sodom, this is best exemplified by L’esqualita, a sympathetic if not entirely rose-tinted paean to New York Puerto Rican drag performers.

If anyone was doubtful of the albums wider social commentary, the title alone should convince them. Evoking the Biblical story of the city ravaged by a vengeful God for its transgressions, the title immediately evokes notions of a society cleaning up its act. Almond confirmed in his autobiography Tainted Life that God, in this instance, was replaced by Thatcher. Though the early 1980’s was not quite comparable to the city of Gomorrah, it’s true that the late 70’s/early 80’s was marked by a feeling of experimentation – punk, early industrial, the rise of electronic punk and new wave. By 1984, this exciting moment in British popular music was coming to an end. Electronic music had become stale, the likes of Thompson Twins and Howard Jones bastardising the genre and releasing insipid electronic pop, devoid of any sense of excitement or danger. Perhaps this explains why the duo moved away from electronic pop into utilising more organic instruments – guitar, drums etc.- and favoured a grittier, muddier sound far away from the simple pop of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. The title evokes a sense of a chapter closing, as the prevailing ideologies of Thatcherism promoted financial gain over artistic merit or experimentation. It is perhaps for this reason that the lyrics also became darker, even by Soft Cell’s standards, describing the decay of morality, the loss of innocence or the undercurrent of sleaze underpinning Thatcher’s Britain. Tracks like Surrender to a Stranger, describing hook-ups in dodgy one-night hotels, and Where Was Your Heart, which tells of a girl who loses all self confidence after being sexually assaulted whilst intoxicated, rebel against the nations shutdown on sleaze by suggesting that it was merely being pushed under the surface, where people would be suffering in silence.

The biblical allusions of the title are carried over in the lyrics. Both Little Rough Rhinestone and Slave to This contain pleas (or maybe demands) to God and Jesus Christ. In this instance religion is not only evoked as a metaphor (again to describe morally righteous Thatcherism) but also literally – in both the Western and Eastern worlds organised religion reached terrifying new heights of power, whether it be the rise of evangelical Christianity in America or the rise of the Islamic state in the Middle East (this phenomena is also brilliantly tacked on Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Red Mecca’ (1981).  This is where the maturity in Soft Cell’s approach is most clearly highlighted – Dave Ball’s musical score had never been so detailed and taut, whilst Little Rough Rhinestone proved the band still had it in them to write a catchy pop hit if they wanted to. Combine this with a matured awareness of global politics and it makes for some of the bands most devastating work.

The albums most overtly political track is Best Way to Kill¸ apparently inspired by a poll ran in a British tabloid asking its readers to vote on their ‘preferred’ method of capital punishment. Lyricist Marc Almond saw this as indicative of the societal malaise that is inevitable under conservative-libertarian ideologies. The lyrics directly reference the intense censorship at the time and  highlights it as essentially repressive: ‘And you can’t say this/and you can’t say that/it’ll darken your mind little child/moral straight-jacket to stop you running completely wild’. Soft Cell themselves were no stranger to censorship, with their Sex Dwarf video being seized by the police, and their single Numbers banned by the BBC for it’s references to the drug speed. This is particularly ironic now given what we know about what was happening behind closed doors at the BBC at the time. The band recognised this hypocrisy, as a duo routinely dragged for being ‘sleazy’ in the press, and Best Way to Kill is the duos rebuttal against such accusations from the system.

National Miners Strike, 1984.

Soul Inside, the albums first single, also succinctly summarises the ideology of the time. The songs theme of holding onto your sanity and personal liberty amongst mounting pressures reflects both the bands disintegration at the time and reflects the dual nature of living under Thatcherism. Living in a free-market that proliferated privatisation and late-stage capitalism, individualism became the dominant ideology. The songs chorus – ‘I just wanna scream to the sky/There are times when my mind/is an explosion of feelings/I gotta hold on to the soul inside’. The twisted duality of this line is that It reflects both someone trying to hold onto their sense of moral sense under a restrictive ideology, but in doing so upholds the critical ideas of such an ideology – that personal liberty and freedom can be afforded by complete individualism.  The authenticity of the lyric, plus the tunes proto-industrial dance beat, is perhaps why the track was Soft Cell’s last Top 20 chart entry (peaking at #16). Very few songs at the time could so succinctly describe the feelings of an age.

The album was released in March 1984 and was almost inevitably met with a critical reaction somewhere between appreciative and hostile. Some critics appreciated the risk whilst others saw it as commercial suicide, something too far removed from what made the band a success. Music critic Paul Morley infamously closed his review with the retort ‘piss off, Soft Cell’. Maybe he found the album too happy to wallow in it’s own sleaze, too angry or too aggressive – ironic, for the man behind Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s leather and bondage centred image. It would seem as well that the albums reputation has remained stagnant in the years since – it is the only Soft Cell album to not be released on CD, and the only one not to be name dropped as a point of reference by future artists. Which is a great shame, because …Sodom is perhaps the bands most complete statement – it is their strongest lyrically, their most iconoclastic and original musically, and by far their most socially conscious. Maybe it’s because it is the sound of a band in its death throes, the soundtrack to an end of an era both politically and personally. It may never reach the level of critical or commercial respect given to it’s predecessors, but any list of great political albums of the 1980’s would be remiss for not giving it at least a passing mention.